How to get highly functional employees in the world of hybrid work

This is a topic that I am very interested in and so have done quite a bit of research into what works best and tested it in my own business.

Here are some ideas that I felt made good sense and if you want to find out more or want to have a discussion about them, please contact me at bsmythe@envisage.email.

I will discuss five ideas:

1. Using tools without abusing them;
2. Measuring output and not input;
3. Meeting rhythms;
4. Being proactive, resulting in less time spent in meetings; and
5. Taking time to hire people.

There are many tools available to help collaboration and hybrid work. Teams, Zoom and Trello are a few of the more popular ones. These can definitely improve collaboration. Teams is a great place for sharing documents and ideas, as well as just chatting to colleagues. Too many Teams calls hamper people from getting work done individually, though, and that is also important. Trello is a good tool for planning and keeping track of what has been done and what needs to happen, but putting too much information into it would mean that people are overwhelmed and can’t easily find what they need.

It is so easy to fall into the trap of measuring the amount of time that someone works when they are out of sight, rather than the quality of the work they are doing. Measuring output and not input gives employees a sense of autonomy and of being trusted. This is important. If the deliverables are not up to standard, then measures can be taken. Working from home brings with it the need to be trusted and held accountable for deliverables.

Meeting rhythms refer to what meetings happen daily, weekly and monthly. Daily meetings are very good (as seen in agile and DevOps) to make sure everyone knows what everyone else is doing and to do a check-in on what was achieved yesterday, what is the plan for tomorrow and are their any issues. These are usually quick and at the start of the day.

Some of the meetings might be social too, especially if everyone is working remotely. Then maybe a weekly or monthly “lunch” is a good idea, where work talk is banned and people talk about the other things in our lives that connect us. I have seen people show off their pets in these calls.

Being proactive can reduce the time spent in meetings. This is related to having scheduled meetings and avoiding ad hoc calls. Meetings should also only be as long as they are useful, if the information is covered in 10 minutes, don’t stretch the call to an hour.

Assigning work and checking in daily shows trust and holds people accountable. It also means that problems show up earlier rather than later.

Hiring people is a challenge if people are not always in the office. When you have a vacancy and suddenly need to replace the person and integrate them into the office culture, it is a challenge. The best way to handle it is to start looking long before you need to employ someone. It is an idea to have people in mind for all the roles you have in your organisation. People you can call on, with whom you have built a relationship, that you know will fit in well when the time to hire is there. 

Besides my personal experience, there are two sources I often consult and they are TomorrowToday (https://tomorrowtodayglobal.com/) and the coaches at GROW (https://www.grow.za.com/). The LinkedIn learning platform also has very good content.

Please contact me if you want to talk about leadership or strategy at bsmythe@envisage.email.